[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 155 (Saturday, September 27, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H10155-H10158]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             GREAT LAKES LEGACY REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2008

  Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and concur in 
the Senate amendment to the bill (H.R. 6460) to amend the Federal Water 
Pollution Control Act to provide for the remediation of sediment 
contamination in areas of concern, and for other purposes.
  The Clerk read the title of the bill.
  The text of the Senate amendment is as follows:

       Senate amendment:
       Strike section 3(f) and all that follows and insert the 
     following:
       (f) Authorization of Appropriations.--Section 118(c)(12)(H) 
     of such Act (33 U.S.C. 1268(c)(12)(H)) is amended--
       (1) by striking clause (i) and inserting the following:
       ``(i) In general.--In addition to other amounts authorized 
     under this section, there is authorized to be appropriated to 
     carry out this paragraph $50,000,000 for each of fiscal years 
     2004 through 2010.''; and
       (2) by adding at the end the following:
       ``(iii) Allocation of funds.--Not more than 20 percent of 
     the funds appropriated pursuant to clause (i) for a fiscal 
     year may be used to carry out subparagraph (F).''.
       (g) Public Information Program.--Section 118(c)(13)(B) of 
     such Act (33 U.S.C. 1268(c)(13)(B)) is amended by striking 
     ``2008'' and inserting ``2010''.

     SEC. 4. RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM.

       Section 106(b) of the Great Lakes Legacy Act of 2002 (33 
     U.S.C. 1271a(b)) is amended by striking paragraph (1) and 
     inserting the following:
       ``(1) In general.--In addition to any amounts authorized 
     under other provisions of law, there is authorized to be 
     appropriated to carry out this section $3,000,000 for each of 
     fiscal years 2004 through 2010.''.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar) and the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman) 
each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Minnesota.


                             General Leave

  Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks 
and to include extraneous material on H.R. 6460.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Minnesota?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. OBERSTAR. Finally, we are here with essentially a conference 
report on the Great Lakes Legacy Reauthorization Act of 2008. This 
great and extraordinary body of water, the Great Lakes, represents one-
fifth of all the fresh water, not frozen, on the face of the Earth and 
is a treasure for all of America, not just for the nearly 40 million 
people who reside on or near or within 100 miles of those Great Lakes. 
It's a treasure for all of America and for the world. It is our 
responsibility. And only us humans can protect that water.
  Only Lake Baikal rivals the volume of water in Lake Superior. Lake 
Baikal is deeper. It's almost 1 mile deep, not as much surface, 
enormously deep water. Next is Lake Victoria in Africa. But all are 
standing in line in significance, in volume and in quality of water to 
the Great Lakes.
  The gentleman from Michigan, for whom I have enormous admiration, Mr. 
Ehlers, has been a relentless champion since entering the service of 
Congress, bringing his splendid scientific mind to the challenges of 
the Great Lakes, of invasive species, of water quality, of bottom 
sediments in the 45 toxic hotspots of the Great Lakes, principally the 
harbors throughout the lakes, the need to study, to understand the 
causes, but then for the need to implement an action program to deal 
with this. It is not enough just to verify in scientific test tubes 
that pollution exists and invasive species are present, but to get to 
the causes and then to roll back that pollution, to roll back those 
invasive species and to prevent their further or future entry into this 
waterway.
  The Great Lakes Legacy Act gives us the opportunity to do that. It is 
the culmination of a great deal of effort on both sides of the aisle in 
both bodies of the Congress.
  I must stop for a reflective moment and go back to 1955 when my 
predecessor, John Blatnik, assumed the chairmanship of the Subcommittee 
on Rivers and Harbors. John Blatnik was also a scientist, a biochemist. 
He served in the OSS in World War II behind Nazi lines in northern 
Yugoslavia in what is Slovenia today, rescuing American airmen shot 
down on returning bombing runs over the Ploesti oil fields in Romania. 
And John Blatnik started his service as an educator in the Civilian 
Conservation Corps after graduating from college. There weren't any 
jobs. He became camp educational adviser in the Superior National 
Forest, later a chemistry teacher in our hometown of Chisholm, and then 
later, as I mentioned a moment ago, with the OSS and working with the 
junior chamber of commerce on resource use conservation.
  When he came to Congress, he brought his scientific mind to bear on 
the problems of the country. And in 1955 he took the chairmanship of 
the Rivers and Harbors Subcommittee and traveled down the Mississippi 
River to understand the work of the Corps of Engineers. What became 
more important for him was to see, as he described it, the raw phenols, 
the raw sewage that came in to the Mississippi River from its 
tributaries and from the cities that lie along the banks of those 2,000 
miles as the river courses from Upper Leech Lake down to the Gulf of 
Mexico. He said that by the time we got to New Orleans, there were raw 
phenols bubbling in the water. It was toxic. It was a soup of 
chemicals. And he realized that more important than the locks and the 
navigation channels was to clean up the Mississippi.
  And then he turned his attention as well to the Great Lakes. These 
were

[[Page H10156]]

great reservoirs of clean water. And how could they be fouled? But by 
that time, the lamprey had invaded the Great Lakes. And in 1953, just 2 
years before he took the chairmanship of that subcommittee, the lake 
trout population plummeted from 3.5 million pounds of catch a year to 
350,000 pounds. The white fish population plummeted from 2.5 million 
pounds to 250,000 pounds in just 1 year because the lamprey exploded 
with violent force on the Great Lakes, this invasive species that came 
in the ballast water of vessels probably from the Black Sea into the 
fresh waters of the Great Lakes.
  That led John Blatnik to launch legislation that he called the 
Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1956, signed into law by 
President Eisenhower, with three key provisions that are still the core 
of the EPA program today, research to understand the causes of 
pollution, funding to help cities build sewage treatment facilities and 
enforcement program to bring communities and industries together to 
clean up where they failed to do so voluntarily.
  A great deal of progress has been made since 1956. Since 1968 when 
the Cuyahoga River caught on fire and caught people's attention, from 
later that year in 1968 when great mounds of suds were floating down 
the Ohio River and endangering water quality of homeowners who would 
turn on their faucets and instead of getting clean water, they would 
get suds coming out. When just a little later, in 1969, Lake Erie was 
declared a dead lake, a dead sea it was called.
  There were many proposals for how to do this. One hare-brained scheme 
was to punch a hole in the bottom of Lake Erie and let all the 
sediments drain down 2,000 feet into some underground aquifer, which of 
course Blatnik said was an absolute idiotic idea and would endanger far 
more than the Great Lakes. But steadily with the funding that was 
provided under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act and later the 
Clean Water Act of 1972, of which he was the principal author and I 
served on the staff at the time, cities along the Great Lakes invested 
some $10 billion, industry invested nearly $110 billion in cleanup, and 
the toxics that once flowed into the Great Lakes began to recede and 
Lake Erie began to regain its vibrancy step by step. And now we have a 
vibrant fishery. We have the same on Lakes Michigan, Ontario, Huron and 
Superior.
  But the challenge is never over. Those toxic hotspots, those 45 areas 
of concern, still have to be dealt with. And the Great Lakes Legacy 
Act, which the gentleman from Michigan championed in 2002 which the 
House passed, the Senate passed and got enacted, set the stage for 
substantial investment that we included in our House-passed version, 
$150 million a year through 2013.
  Regrettably, when this measure got over to the Senate, as so often 
happens in the other body, one person can shut down the Senate and can 
shut down the country. In this case one objection held up Senate action 
on the bill until funding for the program was cut. I'm just so 
disappointed and so anguished over the failure of the Senate to provide 
the funding. They didn't change anything else in the bill, just 
implementing it, just funding it. That is cutting out the heart. That's 
all right.

                              {time}  1200

  Congress survives. We will come back next year. There will be a 
different spirit in the White House, a different spirit in the 
Congress. We will fix that. We will provide funding in years to come. 
For now, it is important to move ahead with this excellent piece of 
legislation, which will help us move further ahead, laying the 
groundwork for creating the framework within which we can undertake 
cleanup in those areas of concern.
  I want to thank the gentleman from Arkansas, the ranking member of 
the Water Resources Subcommittee, for his attention to detail. He has 
really lent his best efforts to understanding the broad problems of 
water quality, water resource development issues, the programs of the 
Corps of Engineers, and I greatly appreciate his thoughtful, scholarly 
consideration. And, of course, our Chair of the subcommittee, the 
gentlewoman from Texas, Eddie Bernice Johnson, who has really been 
vigorous in her pursuit of the water resources issues under the 
jurisdiction of the committee.
  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to first commend our colleague from Michigan, Dr. 
Ehlers, for his years of work with stakeholders from the Great Lakes to 
advance the Great Lakes Legacy Act. The Great Lakes are a vital 
resource for both the United States and Canada. The Great Lakes system 
provides a waterway to move goods, a water supply for drinking, 
industrial and agricultural purposes, a source of hydroelectric power, 
and swimming and other recreational activities.
  But the industrialization and development of the Great Lakes Basin 
over the past 200 years has had an adverse impact on the Great Lakes. 
Although safe for drinking and swimming, in many places fish caught 
from the Great Lakes are not safe to eat. Lake sediments contaminated 
from the history of industrialization and development in the region are 
one of the primary causes of the problem.
  By treaty, the United States and Canada are developing cleanup plans 
for the Great Lakes and for specific areas of concern. The Great Lakes 
Legacy, Act passed in 2002, has helped citizens restore the water 
quality of the Great Lakes by taking action to manage and clean up 
contaminated sediments and to prevent further contamination.
  The Great Lakes Legacy Act authorized the Environmental Protection 
Agency, the EPA, to carry out qualified sediment remediation projects 
and conduct research and development of innovative approaches and 
techniques for the remediation of contaminated sediment in the Great 
Lakes. Legacy Act funding must be matched with at least a 35 percent 
non-Federal share, encouraging local investment. By encouraging 
cooperative efforts with State and local governments and through 
public-private partnerships, the Great Lakes Legacy Act has provided a 
better way to address the problem of contaminated sediments.
  The Great Lakes Legacy Act does not try to presume any particular 
type of cleanup option. Rather, it simply encourages stakeholders to 
take action and make sure that the action they take will make a real 
improvement to human health and the environment. The Great Lakes Legacy 
Act reflects a consensus approach to addressing sediment contamination, 
and it is strongly supported by both environmental groups and business 
groups in the Great Lakes region.
  The House passed H.R. 6460 earlier this month, and now the Senate has 
returned it to us in modified form. As the authorization for the Great 
Lakes Legacy Act expires this year, it is important that we move this 
legislation today. It is a compromise bill that keeps this important 
program working.
  The earlier House-passed version would triple the authorization level 
by raising it to $150 million per year. I am pleased to see a more 
realistic spending level associated with the bill before us today. This 
current bill maintains the authorization level in existing law. The act 
is being funded at a level between $22 million and $35 million per 
year, still far short of the existing $50 million annual authorization 
level.
  While we might like to see more money invested in cleaning up the 
Great Lakes, it is hard to justify tripling the authorization when 
Congress has not been willing to appropriate anything close to its 
current authorization levels. Again, I think that this is something 
that we need to work on to get the authorization level met by our 
appropriators.
  I remain skeptical of including habitat restoration as one of the 
authorized purposes for the funds. By expanding this program to cover 
other purposes, there will be less money for the act's primary purpose 
of getting pollution out of the water. Nevertheless, by all means, the 
Great Lakes Legacy Act has been a successful program, and I support its 
reauthorization.
  I want to congratulate Dr. Ehlers for his hard work in bringing the 
legislation to the floor. He has been a tireless champion for the Great 
Lakes.
  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Speaker, I have no other speakers at this time, and 
I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the

[[Page H10157]]

gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Ehlers).
  Mr. EHLERS. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I appreciate his 
comments. I especially appreciate his support of this bill. I also 
commend the gentleman from Minnesota for his thorough discussion of the 
history of the Great Lakes pollution problems and the solutions that we 
have developed. I certainly appreciate his support for this bill.
  I rise today in strong support of the reauthorization of one of, if 
not the most, effective Federal environmental cleanup programs ever 
developed. Those are not my words, those are the words I have heard 
from many individuals about the Great Lakes Legacy Act which we put in 
effect a few years ago. This bill today will continue that act.
  In 2002, I authored the original Great Lakes Legacy Act, which was 
passed into law with broad bipartisan support. The Great Lakes Legacy 
Act provides Federal funding to clean up contaminated sediments in the 
tributaries of our Great Lakes. These contaminated sediments are a 
legacy of our industrial past, and the longer we wait to clean them up, 
the greater the likelihood that they will be transported into the open 
waters of the Great Lakes, where cleanup is virtually impossible.
  Just to give one example, the city of Kalamazoo, Michigan, has been 
renowned for years for the paper plants which developed high quality 
paper using the forests of Michigan. When PCBs were discovered, that 
seemed like an ideal thing to include in the composition of the 
coatings on the paper. No one realized their poisonous, toxic nature, 
and today the Kalamazoo River bottom is littered with remnants of that 
time with considerable amounts of PCBs.
  Earlier this year, Congressman Oberstar and I introduced H.R. 6460 to 
reauthorize and expand the Great Lakes Legacy Act. In addition to 
making a number of improvements to the original law, our bill also 
dramatically increased the authorization for Great Lakes cleanup from 
$50 million per year to $150 million per year. If fully appropriated, 
this funding level has the potential to clean up all of the known toxic 
hot spots within 10 years, which will save a considerable amount of 
money over the cost which will be incurred if we do not clean it up and 
those toxic materials get into the Great Lakes.
  On September 18, the House passed the Great Lakes Legacy Act by an 
overwhelming majority of 371-20. Unfortunately, the Senate was unable 
to overcome the objections of a few Senators who did not appreciate the 
necessity to authorize enough money to clean up all of the contaminated 
sediments within the next decade. Because the Legacy Act expires on 
September 30th, which is rapidly approaching, supporters in the Senate, 
most notably Senator Levin and Senator Voinovich, worked hard to draft 
a compromise amendment that ensures this vital cleanup program 
continues.
  The Senate approved the amended Legacy Act by unanimous consent on 
September 25. That is the bill which is before us. It is not what I had 
hoped to have. It is not what I think we should have. But the Senate 
amendment, although it decreases the $150 million per year 
authorization, does continue the current $50 million per year 
authorization, plus $4 million per year for ancillary activities.
  The amendment also decreases the authorization from 5 years to 2 
years. This is not because we want to shorten the period of time this 
bill is in effect, but because the Senators wanted to reintroduce the 
bill with us next year and put in place a longer bill with greater 
authorization.
  Although I am disappointed that this funding authority has been 
decreased, I am pleased with for the broad support this program has 
garnered. Congressman Oberstar has mentioned some of that broad 
support. I especially appreciate the commitment of Chairman Oberstar to 
revisit this authorization in the 111th Congress.
  I once again want to thank Chairman Oberstar, Chairwoman Johnson, and 
especially Ranking Members Mica and Boozman for their hard work and for 
moving this bill so expeditiously. It is not always easy for 
individuals from other parts of the country to appreciate the 
importance of the Great Lakes and the importance of cleaning up the 
toxic materials. I personally want to thank Chairman Boozman for his 
very diligent work in examining this issue, fully understanding it, and 
getting the bill through the process.
  I also want to thank all the members of the Great Lakes Task Force, 
and there are many, who have joined in cosponsoring this particular 
bill.
  I ask my colleagues to once again join me in supporting H.R. 6460. 
Let's immediately get this bill on the President's desk for his 
signature, so that this important work can continue unabated.
  Mr. BOOZMAN. I have another speaker, Mr. Chairman.
  Mr. OBERSTAR. We have no further speakers on our side. I welcome the 
gentleman to recognize other speakers.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Altmire). The Chair recognizes the 
gentleman from Arkansas.
  Mr. BOOZMAN. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am from Arkansas, and because 
of people like Dr. Ehlers' hard work, because of our chairman Mr. 
Oberstar's hard work, they really have educated us to help us 
understand the importance of this body of water. So I commend you all 
for your due diligence in that regard.
  I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Illinois 
(Mr. Kirk).
  Mr. KIRK. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, Mr. Boozman, who 
helped bring this bill forward and has developed an expertise on Great 
Lakes harbors, and then our leaders on these issues, the chairman of 
the Transportation Committee, Mr. Oberstar.
  We all should tell many of our fellow colleagues who don't represent 
the Great Lakes that quite obviously our region is studded with 
industrial cities which helped build the United States. But as our 
economy changed, many of these communities were left with bankrupt 
hulks occupying much of the most valuable resources and real estate in 
America.
  In 2001, I joined with Chairman Ehlers to begin this new program, the 
Great Lakes Legacy Act. This program was designed to clean up these 
Midwestern harbors, like Waukegan, Illinois, that suffered from George 
Soros' Outboard Marine Corp that polluted our harbor before Soros then 
looted and bankrupt the company.
  The funding for this program also resulted from a unique story. 
Congressman Rahm Emanuel and I, as newer Members of Congress, were 
invited by the President of the United States on Air Force One. We 
decided jointly that in the corridor of that aircraft we would 
buttonhole the President, and me, somewhat more softly, and Rahm, 
somewhat more forcefully, urged the President to support the Great 
Lakes Legacy Act. Finally, the President relented and said, Okay, Mark, 
Rahm, I get it. Clean up Great Lakes harbors. So appropriations were 
found, even in the President's budget.
  This program now has cleaned up five areas of concern, with 31 to go. 
The success of cleaning up harbors no longer can be doubted, especially 
in my area, because we are all now seeing what is happening in Kenosha 
and Racine, Wisconsin, recognized now as tremendous economic successes.

                              {time}  1215

  When we clean up Waukegan Harbor, in all likelihood, probably using a 
more traditional Superfund authority, we expect to see an $800 million 
economic boom in eastern Lake County.
  Now Chairman Oberstar and Ranking Member Boozman have rightly backed 
this bill, which underscores a key point that environmental cleanup and 
economic development go hand in hand in the Great Lakes. We did run 
into a snag in the Senate, Senator Coburn, who set certain conditions 
on the passage of this bill.
  I wish they could have visited some of these communities. I wish he 
could have seen how much economic development has already been 
fostered. I wish he could have seen the new entrepreneurs and 
businesses created. But, for now, here in the House, we rightly join 
together as Republicans and Democrats to build a success upon a success 
to keep this program on track.
  I thank the authors of this legislation and commend their work and 
urge their quick adoption of this legislation.
  Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. I am 
prepared to close if the gentleman is prepared to close on his side.

[[Page H10158]]

  Mr. BOOZMAN. I want to thank Mr. Oberstar for his leadership, Dr. 
Ehlers for his years and years of being so aggressive and bringing this 
before Congress. This is an important bill. It's something that we very 
much support.
  Also, I appreciate Mr. Mica's hard work in this area and, of course, 
the chairlady of our subcommittee, Eddie Bernice Johnson and her staff, 
for all of their hard work, and then my staff. I look forward to 
working with Mr. Oberstar and Eddie Bernice in the sense of trying to 
get our appropriators working with them.
  Mr. Speaker, we do have an authorization level that we haven't been 
able to meet thus far. I hope that we can work with them in the rest of 
this Congress and certainly the next Congress to get that level up to 
the maximum that we can with what we have dealt with.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. OBERSTAR. Again, I want to express great appreciation to our 
colleagues on the committee on the Republican side who have worked 
without party barriers or banners to deal with a common issue of 
importance to all of us on the Great Lakes, and that is to address 
these issues, these areas of concern.
  I also want to express great appreciation to Senators Levin and 
Voinovich, George Voinovich of Ohio, Carl Levin of Michigan, who both 
have been champions for the Great Lakes. I have known both men for 
many, many years, Senator Voinovich, particularly, going back to his 
years as mayor of Cleveland and Governor of Ohio. We worked together on 
so many issues.
  We worked on economic development of the Great Lakes, water quality, 
trade between Canada and the United States, on the Asian carp issue, 
supporting funding for the barrier to the Chicago rivers, to prevent 
the Asian carp from getting into the Great Lakes; and then the second 
barrier that is authorized in the Water Resources Development Act south 
of the Twin Cities, to prevent Asian carp from going up the Mississippi 
into the inland waters of the State of Minnesota and into the upper 
Midwest. While there is occasionally obstruction from the other body, 
there are people of goodwill, good intentions and good bipartisan 
spirit who deserve recognition.
  In the Duluth Harbor, with the Corps of Engineers and the EPA, we 
have had a remarkable success story in dredging bottom sediments with 
suction dredging and other technologies that avoid reintroduction into 
the water column of the removal of bottom sediments and putting them 
into a contained disposal facility. The Erie Pier in the Duluth-
Superior Harbor has maybe 2 million cubic feet of bottom sediments that 
have been dredged from the harbor, deposited in the facility, with the 
sand filtration barrier that has allowed the water to filter back into 
the lake relatively clean, not quite drinkable, but without the toxics, 
without the PCBs, without the mercury and cadmium and lead and other 
toxic metals that have been found in those bottom sediments.
  What the Corps learned in this project was that the most complicated 
issue is that of grease, fuel oil, gasoline, other hydrocarbons that 
mix with the sand and the clay in the harbor bottom and become 
extremely difficult to extract in the cleanup process.
  Attacking that issue, this is a typical issue, we had a steel mill in 
Duluth for nearly 100 years. Its discharges went into the harbor, and 
that's typical of many communities along the lower lakes that have to 
deal with these problems of bottom sediments. We learned a great deal 
from Duluth. We now need to apply those lessons to the other harbors on 
the Great Lakes.
  It's somewhat of an embarrassment to us in the United States that 
Canada has cleaned up two of its three principal areas of concern and 
we have not done as well in the United States. This legislation sets 
the framework for us to move in that direction, $150 million would have 
provided the funding we need to go in that direction, but we will deal 
with that in the next Congress.
  Again, I thank all who have participated. I am pleased that the 
gentleman from Illinois mentioned Mr. Emanuel from Chicago. Rahm 
Emanuel has certainly been a champion on the issue on our side as well, 
along with a great list of Members.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time and ask for a 
unanimous vote in support of the Great Lakes Legacy Act.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar) that the House suspend the 
rules and concur in the Senate amendment to the bill, H.R. 6460.
  The question was taken.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds 
being in the affirmative, the ayes have it.
  Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX and the 
Chair's prior announcement, further proceedings on this motion will be 
postponed.

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